Minnaars came on to the stage well after midnight, but were clearly looking to have a great time. They bounded onto the stage with youthful enthusiasm and immediately started up with some crowd interaction. This didn’t go down so well however. As it turns out drunk Aberdonian old codgers don’t appreciate English people. This made for an interesting atmosphere for the first half of the gig, though the band had a humorous comeback for anything and everything. This is much to their credit, rarely have I seen a crowd chuckle away so often between songs.
With that note out of the way, on with the important stuff; the music. Minnaars immediately broke out into the excellent Busy Hands. Given that this is what I would consider a genuine dancefloor filler, that’s some statement of intent. Between the pulsating synth, delay-laden, staccato, dueling guitars and dynamic drums and baseline it would be difficult not to dance. The breakdown in the middle with the refrain “I’ve been falling into bits, been like this since the blitz” has always been something I’ve found hypnotically good. This was even more true live. The song has been reworked since it was last put on record and now has an extra bit at the end where a recording of the vocal line has been cut up and placed over new synth lines, before breaking out into an outro. It was a fantastic re-imagining of an already great song. Below is the original version of Busy Hands.
From there the band went on to play a mix of old songs and songs which have been written for their debut LP. This was their first gig since recording some of that album, but you wouldn’t know it from the performance. The band are nearly all extremely dynamic and charismatic performers. Special mention here has to go to the frontman and the two guitarists who were almost always doing something else, different, new, or unexpected. The new material all sounded very interesting, exploring a similar shouty, danceable guitar based area in a number of different ways.
The gig finished with an interesting new song (possibly just an intro for Are Lovers) which had 3 members of the band doing almost nothing but singing at the same time, all over the top of the drums, bass and synth. This led into the fantastic Are Lovers, before the band left having pleased at least a significant subsection of the crowd and it looked like they had fun along the way.
Hopefully their album will come out later this year. In the meantime I’ll make do with the compilation of their work to date “Of Our Delirious Former Loving Hours”.
GiantBomb have a good quick look of the upcoming Blur beta. The game looks pretty interesting, blending Bizarre’s traditional arcade styled racing with physics based weaponry. The game has a good look and the visual effects are stunning. I’ll have more on the game when I play the beta later in March. If you want to get into the beta you can try to get a code from http://www.giantbomb.com/blurbeta/. There are only 1000 codes though, so I suspect they’ll go quickly.
It’s often said that breaking a mirror earns you seven years bad luck. If this is the case, Codemasters seem to have escaped lightly as every single mirror in Race Driver: GRID is utterly broken. I thank them for at least trying to include functional mirrors on the cars in their (arcade) driving simulation. However their implementation is so poor as to actually shatter the illusion that the rest of the game does well to create. The problem is that on the surface the graphics in GRID are very impressive. And while the game makes really impressive use of smoke, its mirrors leave so much to be desired.
In GIRD whenever you look in the mirrors – which is often given this is a racing game – you see a version of the game world which has been stripped of any beauty. I can’t be sure exactly what is rendered differently, but I suspect it’s a combination of lower resolution polygon models and also lower resolution textures. Maybe the lighting is different for the images seen in the mirrors as well. It’s really jarring to see the low quality of the scenes seen through the mirrors as opposed to the relatively high quality of what you see out of the cockpit.
I suspect I’ll have more to say on GRID in the next few weeks. It shares a lot of the issues that concerned me about Colin McRae: DIRT. That makes me worry about F1 2010, which is bound to use the same engine as both of these games. The mirrors in GRID are symptomatic of the occasionally odd decisions made in the development of these otherwise very good games.
Borderlands is a real success story. It could have been so different. It’s not always that a new IP which was heavily delayed – and endured a major change of art style mid-way through development – turns out to be any good. It’s also rare for a developer to take such a risk with genre; whichever way you look at it Gearbox Software either took the FPS and infused it with elements of the dungeon crawler, or vice versa. You get the feeling it was a calculated risk, that Gearbox had total confidence in their unusual idea. They were right to be so confident. Borderlands is easily the most compelling new twist on old genres to come out for many a year and not only that, it’s an intensely satisfying experience from start to finish.
That it is compelling is even more remarkable as the game is given only the barest of story frameworks from which to hang itself. It casts the player as a new arrival on the planet Pandora. A treasure hunter, of sorts, searching for a mythical vault. Fortunately they chose not to labour the point, or even overtly draw attention to the fact that the player is trying to open something which has remained unopened for quite some time, on a planet called Pandora. The rest of the game follows the trials and tribulations of your vault hunter as they search for the vault. Missions are largely handed out as quests by NPCs leading to some questionable MMO comparisons. Rather than it being based on an MMO I see it more in the vein of something like Diablo, minus the random level generation.
While not deep, the story is compelling; largely due to the charismatic band of characters – both friends and enemies – that the player meets along the way. There’s a whimsical style to the portrayal of the character which is really likable. Claptrap in particular is a standout character. The Claptrap robots are found all over and as their name suggests they tend to do all of the talking. They really remind me of Wall-E in a strange way and are always likable. An aspect of their charm probably relates to the fact that you often find them injured and in need of repair by you. In addition to the characters and the natural curiosity felt due to the desire to discover what is contained in the vault, the main driver for the player’s desire to continue through the game is the loot which can be found in crates and on fallen enemies. Loot comes mainly in the form of new guns, but also in the form of grenade mods and also new shields. All of these types of artifact can have various modifiers applied. Some guns reload really quickly, some cause elemental damage, some cause more damage and reload more slowly, some have massively powerful scopes, and for the most part the generation of these weapons and also the equipment is random. This means there’s almost always a shiny new toy hidden on the next enemy or in the next crate. This is really compelling.
The last compeeling aspect is the constant feeling of character progression. The game has an RPG-lite levelling system, with experience points and a skill tree. At level five the player unlocks the skill associated with their class and also starts earning points which can be ploughed into the skill tree. Each class has three distinct branches in its skill tree, though points can be ploughed into any branch at any time. In addition the game allows for the player to re-distribute these points for a cost whenever they desire. Even within one class there are enough different ways to customise your character to make it really interesting. There’s a level cap at 50, so there’s a limited number of skill points and it’s worth really thinking about the way points are spent.
The four classes are really very well differentiated from each other, both visually and in the way they play. The obvious choice for the person playing through it in single player is the Soldier, whose special skill is a deploy-able turret. The other classes are the Hunter; a sniper focused support class whose special skill is a bird of prey (called a Bloodwing) which will kill enemies for the player, the Siren; a weaker class with the ability to phase walk (turn invisible and invulnerable for a period of time, causing damage in an area of effect around the player whenever they go into or come out of the the phase walk state) and the Berserker; a tank like heavy weapons specialist whose special skill is an overdrive mode where they put down their weapons and cause huge amount of damage with their fists. With wildly different appearances, audio cues and play styles, each class feels really well rounded and also rewarding to play as. The Hunter in particular feels quite sadistic with the way he chuckles to himself whenever he kills enemies. Similarly satisfying are the screams of the Berserker in his overdrive more and also the sounds of his swinging punches.
Each class’s skill tree contains some really fantastically though out skills which add further to the entertainment. The soldier in particular has some really interesting abilites such as being able to heal team-mates by shooting at them. This really comes into its own in the multiplayer co-op mode. Indeed the class interaction is fantastic in the co-op setting, with each class feeling essential and really adding to the dynamics of a team.
Once the game has been completed a Second Playthrough opens up where the enemies in each area have increased in level (starting at around the level the player should be by the time they’ve finished their first playthrough), the loot drops also increase in their impressiveness in this second playthrough. This adds yet more longevity to a game which took over 20 hours to playthrough in single player, in addition to the various co-op games I also enjoyed.
While Borderlands is not without its issues such as occasionally nutty / dumb seeming artificial intelligence and a story which could really have been fleshed out a little more, it is easily a top notch game. Its weapons feel weight and accurate, the art style is colourful and unique, visual effects pop and fizz – particularly during intense battles- and the sound design is fantastic. I can’t recommend the game highly enough and look forward to the rumoured and well deserved sequel.
I seem to be fashionable late with this again. Yes, it’s that time where I round up my favourite releases of the past year and write a small amount about each one. Months late. I’m restricting it to a top ten this year, though I may go back and go over a few disappointments from the year in a follow up post.
10. Yeah Yeah Yeahs – It’s Blitz
Had I been quicker off the mark with this, this album wouldn’t have made this list. As it is its relatively lowly position in the list is perhaps due to limited exposure to its charms. This has some excellent synth pop, some of which is true dance floor filler stuff. Heads Will Roll in particular is the sort of pounding, pulsating song which I would genuinely like to hear in clubs. The album has this strong synth pop edge, but a gentle heart of fragile songs like the brilliant Skeleton. So synth pop + fragility + clean guitar = a highly enjoyable album.
9. Jarvis Cocker – Further Complications
With his second solo album, Jarvis Cocker brought his trademark witty lyrics to bear with an album which was much more satisfying than The Jarvis Cocker Record. There was something which I just didn’t enjoy all that much about The Jarvis Cocker Record in retrospect. Further Complications is the album I was looking for. The heart of this album is all about good fun, with songs like Caucasian Blues featuring the whitest instrument known to man (the recorder) playing the blues. Jarvis’ lyrics usually delight on this album, be it lines like “I never said I was deep, though I am profoundly shallow” from I never said I was deep, or the corny “I met her in the museum of Palentology, and I make no bones about it” he finds a way to delight in most songs. What lets the album down however is that its best song is a million times better live. You’re In My Eyes (Disco Song) this version including an amusing improvisation with the lyrics at the start.
8. Sky Larkin – The Golden Spike
Sky Larkin are a band I find hard to explain in the context of most of what I listen to. They are easily the closest thing to pure pop that’s on this list. The album is all about simple hooks, a clever vocal harmony here, a well placed breakdown there, it is pop and unashamedly so. There’s something undeniably likable and honest about the band, they’ve made an album that’s just good honest fun and you can’t really ask for much more than that. Katie Harkin’s vocals really make the album in a way, it’s unlikely the album would feel even remotely the same with another singer.
See also this fantastic video for the song Molten (not the album version if I’m correct though).
7. Grammatics – Grammatics
Grammatics are a band whose album I was really looking forward to in the early parts of last year. In all honesty they only appear so low on the list because of the sheer quality of the releases higher up. They are everything I like from a band, male falsetto singing, female backing vocals, super clean – super delayed – guitar, an interesting extra instrument (double bass), a good sense for the stereoscopic and some fantastic songs. One or two songs prevented the album from being a real great. Check out D.I.L.E.M.M.A. but my favourite song (Relentless Fours) wasn’t a single, so here’s a live version.
6. Graham Coxon – The Spinning Top
The Spinning Top is a return to form and a return to the more acoustic stylings of Coxon’s earlier solo albums. Coxon’s last effort Love Travels At Illegal Speeds seemed to indicate that as an artist he was determined to plough the successful commercial furrow first explored in Happiness in Magazines. Instead Coxon has brought things back to a simpler, yet more satisfying folk style. More importantly the album is whimisical in places and doesn’t take itself too seriously. The two combine to ensure that the album feels enjoyable and also achieves true beuaty in some places. Caspian Sea even manages a riff that sounds like it’s straight out of a 1970s children’s television show.
5. 65daysofstatic – Escape From New York
I won’t dwell on what was essentially a live album. They’re very good. It is very good. The only downside was the relative lack of new material, that has to be expected on a live album though. A band who can only be described as emotional and visceral.
4. The Appleseed Cast – Sagramartha
A band line-up that constantly changes probably helps the sense of progression, or at least difference, from album to album. This may well be their best to date though. As a band they’ve developed to a point where they create truly affecting soundscapes. It ticks all the boxes for something I like, clean guitar, delay, slow build ups, interesting percussion, all mixed together with a hint of piano. South Facing Col is probably the best track on the album. It builds to a crescendo then morphs into something altogether more beautiful, before crumbling in fragility near the end. Excellent stuff.
3. Johnny Foreigner – Grace and the Bigger Picture
Grace and the Bigger Picture is definitely Waited Up ‘Til it was Light’s smarter, wiser older brother. The album was constructed in a much more careful way than its predecessor. There’s a lot of call and response between different tracks, not least the excellent duo Choose Yr Side and Shut Up! and Illchoosemysideandshutup, Alright. These also help form the perfect live trifecta with the addition of Salt Pepa and Spindarella from their debut album. The album pulsates with energy moving at a quick pace before finally ending in relative chaos by the end of album closer The Coast Was Always Clear. The album isn’t without its quieter moments, though most of them come in the early part of the aforemention Illchoosemysideandshutup, Alright and Every Cloakroom Ever.
2. Dananananaykroyd – Hey Everyone!
A brilliantly constructed album. Every song is an absolute riot. The album doesn’t quite convey the energy of their live shows, but that it comes close is testament to its quality. Standout tracks are probably the hand-clapping, “woo”-ing pop number that is Black Wax and the simply brilliant Some Dresses. Not forgetting The Greater Than Symbol and the Hash. Some Dresses is probably just about my favourite song that ever deconstructs itself and re-emerges in a completely different state.
1. Jeniferever – Spring Tides
I once rather cruelly said that while Jeniferever are a great band, I could never see them being anybodies favourite band. That was after seeing them play songs from their debut album Choose A Bright Morning live at King Tuts. Their second album Spring Tides made me eat my words. It is a marvellous piece of work and hardly a week has gone by since its release that I’ve not listened to it at least once. Spring Tides takes the post rock of the first album and infuses it with more strings and more Bowie. Somehow that’s a combination which works fantastically well. They know how to build up a song and then release the tension with a rock out, followed by a calming soothing section which almost always leaves you wanting more. While Nangijala is definitely the centrepiece of the album, Green Meadow island is probably my favourite track.
The JColorChooser Swing GUI component is something which I’d not had the undoubted joy of using until recently. I was shocked to discover how ugly the component is. On top of this the default view serves up colours which are pretty much unusable in their default state. While improvements are being made as part of JDK 7, these don’t address the main issues I have with it. That is, none of the possible views really provide an intuitive way for users to select the colour. It looks like that won’t change in the near future, so I guess it’s a good thing that the component is easy enough to use in programs. It’s flexible enough to use as a component of your own GUI panels and also provides a handy showDialog method which gives you the option to quickly display it as part of a modal or non-modal dialog. All of that just makes the appearance of the component and lack of a really intuitive colour picking component more frustrating.
One of the greatest failings in game design is the failure to properly explain the rules of a situation to the player. When this occurs, the player can find themselves repeatedly in a game’s fail state through no fault of their own. Games can explain the rules of a situation in several ways. The Legend of Zelda series springs to mind as perhaps being slightly heavy handed regarding this in some situations, though it is not exempt from this failing itself. In general though, the series tends to let the user know what is required through a set of visual and audio cues; more often than not a camera zoom / pan and/or audion jungle. The other main way in which games can help in this regard is to force the player past the solution in the environment, before activating the obstacle.
I recently played through Dead Space which failed in this regard on a number of key occasions. I say key occasions because they had a detrimental impact on my opinion of the game. On one occasion I was left repeatedly dieing and on another wondering around aimlessly due to the game not being able to impart crucial infromation about how a situation was supposed to be tackled. The result is that there were a number of occasions where the game was unnecesarilly frustrating, meaning my opinion of the game as a whole was damaged. In this case it left me feeling that the game was just good, falling short of greatness by some small margin because of these failings.
It’s particularly heartbreaking when a game commits this sin as it’s something which could be solved quite easily with an adequate level of playtesting. Often the game designer is in a uniquely poor position to determine if the game is adequately explaining the rules of a situation to the player, as they already know and understand the rules. Adequate playtesting can account for this however. It’s no surprise that the developers which carry out the highest levels of playtesting rarely fail in this regard.
Just a quick note for any ¡Forward, Russia! fans still lurking around these parts. The band have started putting up some recordings on their forum. I already had everything that’s up so far, but it served as a good reminder of how enjoyable a lot of these live recordings are. Hopefully there’ll be more to come over time.
¡Forward, Russia! are still undoubtedly my favourite band and it’s good to see that things aren’t completely quiet on that front. Though a number of the members of the band have been involved in various things which I’m going to be talking about soon, so that’s a positive.
It seems there’s barely ever any good news here. It is with a heavy heart that I note the end of another of my favourite bands.Youthmovies announced their split shortly before the end of last year. It’s not unexpected as things have been quiet on that front for quite some time, and it is well known that the band members no longer live near enough to make being an active band a viable option. Still it is galling as they were spectacularly good the last time I saw them live. Rarely have I seen a band play so tightly, accurately and with such confidence.
For a seven year career (in their various guises) their two mini albums, two EPs and one album perhaps seems like a poor return. However the quality more than makes up for the relative paucity of releases. There is to be one more tour, for which I will definitely make my way to at least one date. Rumour has it that they’ll again be supported by their excellent sometime collaborator Adam Gnade once more as well. Here’s to another great band, which will be missed by many.
